I’ve been slowly coming up to speed on football for a decade now. It was not the sport of my youth. Learning it through youth soccer via my kids and following professional football mostly by way of watching the Premiere League has been my vehicle. That also came with lots of news sites, books, videos, and of course podcast.

I am here at the start of 2026, through countless hours of research, to proclaim the best podcast in that space is the Tifo Football Podcast. Twice weekly it is perfect hour of serious commentary and data driven insight. That is then flipped on it’s head with goofball bits and tangents that ground the sport in it’s roots as a fun kids game and distraction from the world and life.

It is a priority listen every week, even when Tottenham play poorly, which is all the time recently. They rotate the cast of cohost, but generally Joe Devine is the ring leader guiding and then hilariously undermining every topic covered. Lastly I’ve talked about TIFO (their explainer YouTube channel) before on the old site and even on the podcast, RIP. Also their book, How to Watch Football, is great too.

Bonus: Somethings been cut!

I’ve been a long time fan of the All Fantasy Everything podcast and recently their producer has been shouting “somethings been cut!” when they need to edit out something problematic. He then confirmed its an homage to the Tifo Football Podcast. Love a cross over.

Marco Plus jumped on to my 2021 annual playlist^ as an addition in 2023. Which is a long way of saying I’ve known about him, but wasn’t on it. His latest album at the end of 2025 has been a full exploration of his music for me and I’m here to say that it is good stuff.

^ The track was “Lately” and it still destroys:

Love a Daniel Warren Johnson comic. Last year a highlight was Absolute Batman, but this past weekend I stumbled into these older videos he did with Proko. The first is him digging through his travel art supplies and explaining how he uses them. I bet you can’t avoid buying something new after watching it. I couldn’t.

The second is a walk through of how he draws perspective environment scenes with some of those same tools. Of course he references Kim Jung Gi during it, how could he not.

Did I do a Cookin Soul post on the old blog? Who knows? It is however that time of year where I put on the mixtapes and remind others how dang good they are.

Brand new for 2025…

Old favorites…

I love that the gymkhana series, made popular by Ken Block, has continued with Travis Pastrana. This years video features a sick car and jaw dropping stunts. That is every year, but they keep pushing the creative and death defying boundaries. Almost more interesting is the behind the scenes for the build out of this years car, based on the Subaru BRAT (Bi-drive Recreational All-terrain Transporter).

The interesting nugget about the “chicken tax” seats in the bed was right up my alley.

The Chicken Tax is a 25 percent tariff on light trucks (and originally on potato starch, dextrin, and brandy) imposed in 1964 by the United States under President Lyndon B. Johnson in response to tariffs placed by France and West Germany on importation of U.S. chicken.

From 1978 to 1987, the Subaru BRAT carried two rear-facing seats (with seatbelts and carpeting) in its rear bed to secure classification as a “passenger vehicle” and not as a light truck.

How am I just hearing about Rome Streetz in 2025? He’s been on for a minute and collaborating with an all star roster of MCs. Not till I saw his 2025 album Trainspotting pop up in some year end list did I get acquainted. He is in good company with the likes of Griselda, Boldy James, and and smoothly sails over Conductors beats. Give it a listen.

We are getting creative as 2025 and the ABC challenge come to a close. Creative as in we are into “there isn’t a restaurant for that letter” territory.

Y Lost Letter

Bending the rules in acknowledgement that there are no letter “Y” restaurants lets us sneak in big hitters. Nearly everyone we shared the challenge with asked if we had a letter “L” and if we didn’t Lost Letter should be it. It completely lived up to the hype. Fancy dining, fancy food, and all of it delicious. This for sure feels like a special event restaurant, but we went on random Wednesday for the challenge and it was great.

QPot Hot Pot & BBQ

Yikes, this is the first restaurant in over twenty that we didn’t actually like. The review rule of thumb failed us. You could probably chalk this up to a chain of events. We’d never been to hot pot, the waitress asked us, and then explained so quiet and fast that we had to watch a quick video on our phones to figure things on our own. We eventually ate some good food, but I am generally not a fan of restaurants where I am in in charge of making me a great meal. Fondue, salad bars, Mongolian BBQ, and now Hot Pot are off the list.